How Canopy Growth Benefitted From Partnering With Snoop Dog

Some of the old fashioned taboos around cannabis are quickly disappearing.

In fact, there's so much happening in the cannabis space, that TheStreet's founder and Action Alerts Portfolio Manager, Jim Cramer, made it one of this big themes at his recent Bootcamp for Investors in New York.

Bill Newlands, the COO of Constellation Brands (STZ) , sat down with Cramer to talk about the alcohol company's push into cannabis. Canopy Growth (CGC) CEO Bruce Linton also joined the two for the exclusive, standing-room-only conversation.

Cramer kicked the conversation off with a video from Snoop Dog. And while the promotion was humorous, it also struck a serious cord. "I thought this was funny but at the same time I recognize that this is a metaphor of what's happening in this industry," Cramer said.

Bruce Linton responded "Alright, so in Canada we have a lot of regulations." He added, "The rule says for a premise where you grow cannabis, you can't have a single plant in it until the whole place is securitized and there's a method by which you can keep track of the plants."

Linton continued, "When we got that in February and then again in April for our site in British Columbia... the first one we moved plants to... is 1.3 million square feet of greenhouse. And then the second site is 1.7 million square feet of green house. And the cool thing about that size of a greenhouse is you can actually see the curvature of the earth inside the green house. It's a true story."

So, when it was time to move the plants over, Canopy wanted to make sure there was credibility behind their effort. So, what did they do?

"What we wanted to do was create an image and a PR around it. So we had Snoop go in. But the other actors you may not know are internationally renowned from Greenhouse Seeds from DNA and so what we did is we tried to make this feel like it's actually a really credible narrative to the people who are inside cannabis."

"To the people who are socially aware and say, 'Snoop's interesting.'"

Linton added "And so it's a really important thing, right, you wanna open the door, lay the carpet out and say, come on over, quit buying form the other guy and buy from the legal guy."